Some horse owners feel that it is necessary to ‘wash’ a colt or gelding’s prepuce (sheath) and penis on a fairly regular basis. While this may seem an innocent attempt to keep their horse ‘clean’, sheath washing is usually unnecessary and can result in the establishment of quite severe bacterial infection [...]
This is one of the conditions that affect young foals during their first few days of life. It is potentially life threatening. Some cases occur when the full urinary bladder wall tears in response to high pressure during delivery whereas others result from incomplete development (closure) of the bladder wall leaving [...]
Unfortunately, it is occasionally necessary to try to foster a foal onto a mare that is not its natural mother. This may be for any one of a number of reasons. The common ones are:-
For mares who are ill or die at or soon after foaling.
For mares with a history of being aggressive [...]
The expected birth of a foal from a favourite mare is an exciting but worrying time for many horse owners. Ideally, help and advice should be sought from your veterinary surgeon or someone with experience of foaling mares, in good time before the event. It is most important to know what [...]
If your favourite mare is about to produce her first foal, the event you’ve been anticipating with so much excitement may suddenly become rather frightening. What if something goes wrong? You can relax in the knowledge that ‘mother nature’ looks after most mares and their newborn foals extremely well, although problems [...]
In pregnant mares, unlike most other animals, antibodies (the blood’s special immune proteins) do not cross the placenta into the foal’s blood stream before birth. Therefore, when a foal is born it has no natural defence mechanisms against infection, because it has no antibodies with which to fight infection. Normally, the [...]
Abortion is the delivery of a dead foal and its placenta before an age at which the foal would have been able to survive independently. This is usually taken to be up to day 300-310 of gestation. After 300-310 days, if a dead foal is delivered apparently close to or at term, [...]
